


in another time

by annavale23



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode: s12e10 The Timeless Children, F/F, Fix-It of Sorts, Minor Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan, No Major Character Death, Post-Finale, Ryan and Graham are in the background mostly, Spoilers for Episode: s12e10 The Timeless Children, The TARDIS features, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 21:21:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22990450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annavale23/pseuds/annavale23
Summary: “Can you do it, Doctor?” The Master’s breathless, driven to new levels of excitement. His eyes bore into hers: he knows what she’ll do, what she always does – she’ll give in, toss the detonator away and face the consequences – but a mad part of him hopes she’ll prove him wrong.“I don’t think you can, you know,” he says. “But please, please prove me wrong.”...In one universe, the Doctor runs and lets someone else press that button.In another, she stays. She'll make sure he dies this time.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor & Yasmin Khan, Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 15
Kudos: 81





	in another time

**Author's Note:**

> So... after that series finale, I had to write something to cope with that ending. This isn't so much a fix-it but an alternate ending? Mostly because I wanted to really show the Doctor would go to any length to make sure the Master truly dies this time. I had intended to write a more fluffier piece for my first fic for this fandom, but this one had to come out. The shipping's a little mild, but since I do ship 13/Yaz, I had to hint at it a little. I hope you all enjoy this!

She’ll press the button.

He doesn’t think she’ll do it. The Master, with that half deranged look on his face when she pulls out the detonator with the shrunken Cyberman clipped to it. He doesn’t think she’ll do it but he dares her to anyway. His words slip under her skin like they’ve always done, a rash she could never rinse out, his eyes wider and more fanatical with every passing moment. It pulses in him, writhing like the Cyberium is too.

“You won’t do it,” he says, a manic laugh bubbling from his lips, ugly and loud yet neither she nor the Cyber-Time Lords flinch. _You won’t_, he shakes his head and stops, expression dropping to curious at the flip of a second. “Or will you? Maybe you will! Maybe you’ve got the mettle!” His laugh once more, echoing with his insanity. “Come on, Doctor, do it! Press that button!” He’s sinking to his knees, begging her. Begging her to do what he half believes she won’t, half believes she will because everything is a challenge when it comes to the Master. The Master and the Doctor, always locked in that immortal challenge and she’s the one that always backs off and lets the next round begin. She never stops it. Today, she stops it. She’ll press that button.

“Come on, Doctor,” he repeats, his forehead practically pressed against the detonator and the smile stretches so wide it should, by all rights, split his face open. Split it so everything else can tumble out, all that bad, all that mad. _It’s the piece of you inside of me that did this, _he’s said, outside in the ruins. _You’re the reason I’m like this_, but now she’s got a detonator that’ll consume them both and he’s begging her to press it.

It’d kill them all. The bodies – because of course he’s left the _bodies_, just in case, because that’s how he’s like. The converted Cyber-Time Lords, all standing there with their impassive broken eyes – she wonders whose faces are lost behind those metal masks, and did she know any of them? Would she recognise any of them? The detonator would kill them all, and her and him too.

Her and him, a final end. How often have they been in this position? His eyes staring into hers, laughing all the way because he knows her, and her eyes staring into his, despairing all the way because she knows _him_ too. They have done it too many times, stood on the edge of death before, but she has always had some sort of failsafe and now she has none. If – when – she presses this button, she’ll kill them both. In a way, it’s poetic. She and him, dying together. Isn’t that how it should be? The Master and the Doctor, both perishing together – because they began together, why not die together too? – and both perishing for what they believe in. Chaos for one. Family for the other. Because he’d do anything to cause chaos in the world and she would die a million times over for her family. For Earth and humanity too, of course, but her _family_. Ryan, with his boyish joy and his very human emotions. Graham, with his love that seems to know no bounds, his maturity and grandfatherly attitude. And Yaz, amazing Yasmin Khan who’s never afraid, always ready to dive straight in. Her fam, the first thing this face could call hers. Hers. She would and will die for them and it’s a worthy cause, she thinks. If she has to die, isn’t dying for her family the best way to go? Yes, her mind’s shattered. She doesn’t know what to believe and she doesn’t understand it either. Her very core’s been rattled and shaken, but they are part of her touchstone and this will be her gift to them. Stopping these creatures, stopping the Master, so his creations are born and will die here without ever truly existing. This is for the best. This is.

She still gets their faces flashing in her mind as the Master laughs, crazier with every nanosecond. Graham’s understanding flooding his reluctance to let her go, because of course he’d understand. Ryan’s begrudging turning away, accepting what has to come to pass. Yaz’s _why are you doing this_ among her breaking heart. Yaz for certain won’t understand this. She’ll settle in time, of course, because humans are capable and that’s what the Doctor’s always loved about them, and Yaz will move on. She’ll think of the Doctor until she doesn’t, of the blue box until she doesn’t. But she’ll never understand why the Doctor had to do this. They’ll always be a part of her that thinks there could have been something else she could have done, something she could have said or done or offered, something that would have let the Doctor stay in that TARDIS safe and sound. Graham will understand, because he’s old enough to. Ryan will too, because he’s seen death too often already, and he’ll understand that sometimes it’s inevitable. But Yaz is the type to never understand and that the Doctor has regrets about. Maybe she should have tried to do something about it before, before she dragged them all into a cyber war they had no reason to be involved in. Maybe she should have done something about Yaz’s heart. But there’s nothing she can do now. She started this all. She let the Cyberium join the lone Cyberman; she chose to save Shelley and Earth’s future even after all the warnings saying not to. She brought all this on when she let the Master fool her as O; when she didn’t see the Master’s escape either. If she wants to go back further, she started it when she failed to see his madness creeping up on him, when she ran away and left him behind. And further too, to things she can’t remember and can’t understand. When something inside her became part of all Time Lords; when she _made_ them by existing when they took from her. This is all on her shoulders and now she’s got a detonator in hand.

Time is slow now. Almost stopped and she can just stare. At the Master’s face, eyes blown wide and bloodshot, his skin shining silver with that Cyberium, at his freakish soldiers too. At the button under her thumb. _The Doctor doesn’t use weapons, _she’s always said, but maybe this is her breaking point. There are days to be a pacifist and there are days to throw all that away and today is that day, maybe. Being a pacifist won’t save the universe. It’ll just let the Master win and she can not will not allow that.

So there is only one choice. Detonate and blow them both to hell.

This close, he won’t escape. He can’t run from her and maybe she’ll grab him too, just to make sure. They could die together and both truly die so this isn’t like before, when one of them inevitably survives. This close, he’ll die. The knowledge of the Time Lords, the knowledge of the Cybermen. It’ll all die with him.

The universe will finally be free from the Time Lords.

But she’s not really one of them anymore, is she? It’s all lies and he warned her about it too – and while she’ll never condone what he’s done here, a part of her can at least begin to understand. The carpet was ripped from under his feet and he’s never been the most stable of people. This destruction was his anger, anger he couldn’t comprehend so he lashed out, just like a toddler. Granted, he’s worse than a toddler. He’s killed and then desecrated too. But it’s all lies and he’s never been good at dealing with things like that. It’s all lies and she’s not really a Time Lord. She’s something else; she’s the Timeless Child. He, the Master, is the last of his race. The last in his own doing and she’s alone.

She wasn’t born on Gallifrey.

And accidentally, she lied to her fam.

_I’m the Doctor. I was born on a planet called Gallifrey. I’m a Time Lord._

All lies, and they’ll live their good lives never knowing the truth.

All lies, and she’ll die only just learning about herself.

So many questions she’ll lay to rest. Ruth. The missing memories. This division. Who she is, really. All these questions that are so loud in her head right now will disintegrate with her and the remnants of everything organic on this planet. Maybe it’s for the best. To lay everything to rest: the Time Lords and their bodies, the Master and his warped mind, her and her _questions_. She talks too much, thinks too much, and the questions just keep on coming. More and more and if she had more _time_ she’d spent a millennia analysing this, figuring out what went on in her lives she can’t touch. If she had more time, she’d spent a hundred years weaving her goodbyes. If she only had more _time-_

But she doesn’t. Time is running out, sand between her fingers. The goodbyes she wants to give – no. The questions she has – the answers will never be found, and even if she had time, would she be able to find those answers? She might be lost, answerless, forever. At least if she dies now, if she presses that button, she’ll never have to spend those millennia _wondering_. It’ll all be over _now._

And anyway, if she doesn’t… He will lay waste to this universe.

Her fam, back in the twenty first century, will be safe for now.

He’ll destroy the universe.

Then he’ll work backwards and kill everything there as well. Through the centuries, through the ears. He’ll kill it all and laugh on the smoking corpses. All because of a _lie._

Just one button press.

The fate of the universe rests on _one button press._

“Are you going to do it, Doctor?” The Master laughs. She hates how his voice has twisted, how his soldiers look behind him. So impassive and empty – and the Time Lords were never _much_ for emotion, but that is just _wrong_. They shouldn’t be metal. They shouldn’t be like this. Immortal. Regenerating. _Her_ genetics did that, and so she’ll end it too.

She hates how clever it is too. Regenerating Cybermen. How _clever, _and how _him_.

“I’ll press this button and kill us all,” she tells him, her voice a strong, never-breaking spine and it fills her with more confidence when she sees the flicker in his eyes. He thought he could break her and that just proves it. The Master’s never really understood her if he thought he could break her.

“Will you?” His eyes light up, stirring with some forbidden schism. “You’ll trigger that bomb. Kill me. You. My army. All the bodies I stored. Every scrap of Time Lord DNA. You’ll kill it all, kill any chance of rebuilding our race. Are you really willing to do that?”

_If I don’t, you’ll destroy the universe and make it a wasteland, _her thoughts scream. _You’ll never be content until everything’s burning and even then, there’ll always be more you could do. There’s always more you can do_._ And I have to stop it. _

And she does. She has to press that button, even if it’s a terrifying thought. She has to press the button and know her fam will live on without her. She has to press the button and know she’ll die here. No regenerations will save her. The Doctor and the Master and the last scraps of the Time Lords. All of it will die here.

“I can’t believe it!” The Master crows. “I’ve finally done it, haven’t I? I’ve pushed you to that edge you said you’d never go!”

Her face tightens. She stares at him, her face a perfect mask. He laughs anyway, finally pushing away from her and the detonator. The sudden change is enough to make her jump a little but he’s not doing anything suspicious. He stalks a few steps away from her and turns on his heel in a turn that rivals her style, and his expression is almost like those prank shows Ryan likes watching. That moment when it’s all revealed – that’s what it is. She tightens her grip on the detonator, her thumb rock solid. He doesn’t seem to care.

“You’ll press that button,” he says, his eyes feverish, and she can almost see the edge he’s tip toeing by, the edge he’s always been tip toeing by. This Timeless Child knowledge – it’s pushed him closer to that abyss. She’s done that, like she always does. He gets madder and madder and she pushes him closer to the edge. He’s irredeemable. She’s still the starting reason for all of this.

“You’ll press that button, and then guess what? You’ll be just like _me!_ I’ll have _won!”_ And he’s ecstatic with the knowledge. She narrows her eyes and says nothing, though a muscle jumps in her throat.

“If you press that button, I win,” he says.

She thinks, one more time, of her fam. Of all the things she wished she’d done before this. Of all the adventures.

For one flashing moment, she thinks of a pair of lips she never kissed.

A leather jacket under her hands. Desperate eyes trying to make the other pair understand.

_All those feelings. All those moments. All those adventures._ There was so much she was meant to get around to, so much she wanted to show them. She’d barely _started._

So much.

“Can you do it, Doctor?” The Master’s breathless, driven to new levels of excitement. His eyes bore into hers: he knows what she’ll do, what she always does – she’ll give in, toss the detonator away and face the consequences – but a mad part of him hopes she’ll prove him wrong.

“I don’t think you can, you know,” he says. “But please, _please_ prove me wrong.”

She imagines how it’ll go. She’ll drop her hand. He’ll crow. She’ll know she’d have let everyone down. He’ll go on to ruin the universe.

_Everything the Time Lords are started with something in me. _

_I don’t even know who I’m meant to be anymore_.

The Doctor has always been a pacifist, a saviour. Has always been one to do as The Master would expect her to do. She doesn’t like guns. She doesn’t like bombs.

But sometimes, there is no other way.

Sometimes, he makes there be no other way.

And sometimes, she’s not really herself. The Doctor – she stepped onto Gallifrey and lost her name for a moment, in the Matrix. She won’t lose everything else to.

Their faces are in her head.

Those unfamiliar memories are nothing compared to those faces. _He’s_ nothing compared to those faces.

The Master laughs, his metal statue army still behind him. His laughter echoes, madder and madder with every second.

“Let me _win_,” he says.

The Doctor grins.

Wide. Wide enough to split her face and let everything spill out.

“You won’t win,” she says and the Master’s face faux-falls for a moment.

“You-”_ disappoint me_, he goes to say. _Just like you always do._

The Doctor remembers the scent of Yasmin Khan’s shampoo.

And then she presses the button.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

She presses the button.

On Earth in the Twenty First Century, Yasmin Khan stares at a blue sky.

Somewhere out there, her friend is dying. Somewhere out there, her friend is _dead._

It all seems like a dream. She can still smell the metal scent of the cyber armour on her, the cloying smell of it and then the smoke of Gallifrey too. She can look at see the three humans they rescued. She can look and see Graham, Ryan.

It all seems like a dream. The Doctor can’t be _dead._

_Live great lives._

Yaz breathes in, a little too sharply. It burns the back of her throat.

Less than an hour ago, she was stood in front of a glowing split in the universe. The boundary showing a burned carcass of a world and she stepped in without a second thought. Less than an hour ago, she strode forward to save her friend. She had no idea what she might find on the other side, or if they’d be attacked – or even if the Doctor was still alive, not that she let herself dwell on that last bit. She’d walked forward anyway, knowing there to be no other option. Where the Doctor goes she does. That’s what she’d decided somewhere along this journey. Where the Doctor goes, she’d go. Not without question, but she’d go.

So she’d stepped onto Gallifrey and words can not describe the feeling in her stomach when she’d seen the Doctor lying still on the ground. Her fingers searching for a pulse in that slim wrist; finding the faint echoing of two.

Words can also not describe the feeling in her heart when the Doctor had opened her eyes.

And Yasmin Khan would have followed the Doctor anywhere. Right into that chamber with the Master and his cyber army. She’d have gone with the Doctor, clutching her hand tightly and she’d have pressed that button with her. She would have and Yaz knows this for certain. Even if that meant she’d die, if the Doctor had needed her, she’d have gone. Walking proudly into hell itself.

The sound of this unfamiliar TARDIS pulling away had almost broken her.

She’d forced herself to keep it together, to seal her breaking heart away for the sake of the others, but inside-

She’d broken.

Her hand in her pocket and she’d felt the TARDIS key the Doctor had given her. The key to _her_ TARDIS, their TARDIS, their second home. That smooth metal between her fingers and she’d remembered the day the Doctor had given them out to them all. _Just in case, _the Doctor had said, solemn for a moment and then her face had broken with a smile. _If you ever need the TARDIS, the key will help you._

Yaz feels for the key now, as she stands on twenty first century Earth.

That metal that’s always somehow cool.

She stares at the blue skies.

A single tear rolls down her face.

The Doctor is gone.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

She presses the button.

But halfway across the universe, the TARDIS has other ideas.

Alone and abandoned on a planet ravaged by war. The TARDIS has been left so many times before, left in the dark and on the edge of galaxies and _alone_. The TARDIS is left over and over, and she always finds her traveller in the end. Her thief who’s deep and scarred by it all, and they always, _always_ find each other. They are almost one, intertwined so deep. To kill one would be to relegate the other to a half-life.

Halfway across the universe, there is a wheezing of engines. Halfway across the universe, the _whoosh_ sound echoes across an empty planet and a fierce wind sets up as blue fades to nothing. Halfway across the universe, a light flickers on inside the TARDIS. A locking system. A key, touched, a memory imparted.

Halfway across the universe, the TARDIS dematerialises.

A button is pressed. A thumb pressed down, and an explosion triggered. A widening of eyes from the Master, his mouth falling open. He is, for once, completely taken aback. She proved him wrong.

From the Doctor, a steady spine. The detonation begins.

She is ready, she thinks. Ready to give it all up.

It is a second. Half of that, maybe.

But half is enough.

One moment the world is ending.

The next, the TARDIS is dematerialising back into to Earth.

And this time, she’s got her passenger.

The ship lands with a little jolt, and the Doctor stumbles for the doors.

A part of her is in shock. Is this a dream? Some pre-death fantasy cooked up in her last milliseconds of life?

Behind her, the TARDIS beeps, murmuring gently into her skull.

_Not a dream._

_Real_, the TARDIS says.

The Doctor wrenches open the TARDIS doors. That’s the only way to know for certain, her still fried mind decides. If she can open them up, this is real. Behind her, the TARDIS is silent now. She understands it’s what the Doctor needs to do.

The doors open.

The Doctor blinks, her feet stepping out of the box, and she holds an arm over her eyes for a moment as the bright light momentarily blinds her. Then, taking a step forward again, her arm drops down and she stands, still and away from the TARDIS, and she realises. She is on Earth. Gorgeous, beautiful Earth.

And-

“I’m alive,” she says, lips numb and skin still tingling from the aftermath of this all, and a there’s a breeze on her face, a fresh clean breeze untainted by the smoke of Gallifrey, and she is _alive._

It’s strange.

She doesn’t have much time to contemplate that thought however, because across the grass, Yasmin Khan has seen her, and Yasmin Khan is _running._

Yaz’s body hits hers with a thump, and arms are thrown around her, warm and heavy and they’re squeezing her terribly tight. Her face smashes into Yaz’s shoulder and she breathes in deeply, that familiar scent that she bid goodbye to only minutes before. Yaz is speaking – the Doctor can hear the vibrations through Yaz’s chest and against hers – but she can’t hear the words, not yet. Her head is too full of all she’s learnt, of the decision she made. She pressed the button. She pressed the button, didn’t she? She pressed it and made her peace with the decision. She’d press the button to end the Master’s craziness. 

And yet here she stands. Encased in Yasmin Khan’s arms with a breeze on her face because _she is alive._

Yaz hugs her for what could be years, could be seconds. Either way, it feels amazing. She could stay here forever, the Doctor thinks, enclosed and safe, and the world outside can wait.

But it can not last forever. Soon enough, Yaz pulls away and the Doctor blinks, her eyes settling upon the face of one of her best friends in all the worlds.

“What happened?” Yaz asks, as she must need to.

“I… I don’t know.” Behind Yaz, she sees Graham and Ryan, the other half of her fam, and her heart swells with love for all of them. Yaz, Graham and Ryan, the people she would have gladly died for and yet they are here and she is here and they are finally _safe._

“You don’t know?” Yaz’s hands are still clutching her so tightly, the Doctor realises distantly. Yaz’s eyes, so wild, darting around her face over and over as if to check that yes, she _is_ here.

“I…” The Doctor swallows. “I pressed the button.”

_You won’t do it, but do it, Doctor. Let me win_.

“And then I wasn’t there anymore. I was on the TARDIS.” She has never been more grateful to see her beautiful ship. “She must have materialised around me in the split second I pressed the button.” Dangerous. That was _dangerous_ of her ship to do so. So dangerous, because a slice off and they’d both perished. But her TARDIS is the best of the best, at least to her, and that’s why they chose each other. Both risk takers, both daring and most of the time, it pays off. Today, it paid off _spectacularly._

“She saved you?” Yaz says, a bubbling of something in her voice. Relief – that’s what it is. The Doctor nods.

“She must have sensed it, somehow.” Having a telepathic ship helps sometimes. “Sensed it and come to save me.”

Yaz smiles. It’s a little tight on the edges, not because it’s not genuine, but because today has been ever so trying. The Doctor knows that later, she will have to answer questions about Gallifrey, about the Master. She knows that later, she will have to comfort and assure them over what has happened to them too. She’ll have to help those three humans she brought back to this time too.

But that can wait.

That can all wait.

Right now, she can just breathe in fresh air and be amazed. She pressed the button. She’s destroyed what is left of the Time Lords. Hopefully, she’s destroyed the Master too, because how could he escape that when she only did thanks to her loyal TARDIS?

Yaz is smiling at her.

Graham too. Ryan gives her a nod, a smile twitching at the corner of his lips.

Her hearts are thundering. Beating, pumping blood around her body. Her body that is not what she thought it was, fuelling memories that are only the most recent of the many she must have lived. But her hearts are beating, because she pressed the button.

Her hearts are beating, because she is alive and safe with her fam.

And she is so much _more_.


End file.
